Jun
21
Actors’ Gang: “1984″
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I don’t see enough plays. A few years ago, I used to go all the time. There are so many great theatres in and around the L.A.-area. I prefer the smaller venues. The ticket prices are a tad steeper than a movie — usually around $15 - $18 — but you’re pretty much guaranteed solid performances across the board and maybe a famous face or two.
This afternoon, I went to see a stage production of “1984″ at the Redcat in Downtown L.A.
I’d somehow managed to get through high school without having read George Orwell’s novel. Only last year did I get around to finally reading it and loved every prescient page. Shortly after, I tracked down the out-of-print DVD of the film, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton and Suzannah Hamilton’s naughty bits. I found the movie entertaining, but a fairly dry and straightforward adaptation. The trouble with realizing the book on film is that so much of Winston Smith’s conflict is internal. He spends a lot of his time reading and writing, somewhat boring activities on film. But all the sex and torture scenes manage to spice things up a bit.
The stageplay, directed by Tim Robbins, retains the spirit of the novel, but strips everything down to one location — a holding cell in the bowels of the Ministry of Love where Smith stands accused of his numerous thoughtcrimes. Shaved bald, looking half-starved and wearing blood-stained undergarments, the actor portraying Smith is shackled to the floor and harangued by four party members as well as the booming, omnipresent voice of Big Brother. Passages from his diary are read back to him and key scenes from the novel are reenacted. Ultimately, Smith is hauled into room 101 and tortured further by O’Brien, where he learns that two plus two equals five and to stop worrying and love Big Brother.
The stage has its own set of limitations, but unlike film, allows for the audience to use their imagination to a greater degree. I was sort of disappointed that all the action was limited to the holding cell. I would’ve liked the structure of the novel to have remained in place and more locations to have been used: Winston’s apartment, his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth, the room in the Prole district where he and Julia meet in secret, O’Brien’s apartment, etc. The same backdrop of the holding cell could’ve remained part of the background (thematically it would’ve worked brilliantly), but a few tables and chairs and the audience’s imagination could’ve gone a long way in building a larger world.
With the story being described more or less in series of flashbacks, the conflict doesn’t necessarily rise and the character beats seem much more anecdotal. Stretching out Smith’s interrogation over two hours is also a bit exhausting with all the yelling and screaming and electrocuting that’s going on.
Robbins does bring a few contemporary touches to the production. The party members are wearing Oceania lapel pins, and the words “terrorist” and “homeland” find their way into the script several times. Yet I’m surprised Smith wasn’t wearing an orange jumpsuit, and I guess waterboarding was too messy. Despite my nitpicks, I did in fact enjoy the stage version of “1984.” You could say I had a plus-good time taking in a little theatre this weekend.
-Brad Lohan
Jun
10
“Devil May Care” Book Review
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I love James Bond novels, well, the James Bond novels written by Ian Fleming. A handful of other authors — Kingsley Amis, John Gardner and now Sebastian Faulks — have been commissioned to write additional adventures for 007 over the years. Kingsley Amis wrote only one book, 1968’s “Colonel Sun.” In the ’80s and ’90s, Gardner wrote over a dozen Bond novels. I’m about halfway through them. They’re fairly interchangable. Nobody does it better than Fleming.
To commemorate Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday last month, the 36th(!) Bond novel was published, “Devil May Care,” written by Sebastian Faulks as Ian Fleming. I’m not sure how one writes “as” someone else, short of committing plagarism. Maybe Faulks wore an Ian Fleming costume or had a seance and allowed the spirit of Fleming to possess him; in the latter event, I’m not sure how the royalties will be paid out.
Of the authors I’ve read that have tried to channel Fleming, I think Faulks is probably the most successful. “Devil May Care” might suffer from a slow buildup and more than a little borrowing from Fleming’s cache of villains (Dr. Julius Gorner cheats at tennis, just as Hugo Drax did at cards and Goldfinger at golf). But once Bond is sent to Iran — or Persia as it was in 1967 when the novel is set — the book ramps up and becomes a worthy entry in the series.
Bond hasn’t fully recouperated from the events of “The Man With a Golden Gun” at the beginning of “Devil May Care.” He’s on extended leave and mulling over the idea of resigning from the double-O section. He’s smoking less and not drinking at all. He even turns down the advances of a married woman he meets in Italy. It’s enough to make you double-check the cover of the book just to make sure this is in fact a James Bond title.
M summons Bond back to London and puts him on the trail of Dr. Gorner — a former soldier for the Nazis then the Russians (flip-flopper!) during World War II, who’s since become a giant in the pharmeceutical industry. He also has a fairly distinctive malformity, a monkey’s paw for a left hand, thus making him evil. And every Bond villian worth his salt is incomplete without an even more gruesome henchperson. This time it’s Chagrin, a fellow from Indo-China, experimented on by the Russians to improve upon his inherent psychosis. Now he doesn’t register pain, the top half his face is frozen in casual indifference and he wears a French Foreign Legion kepi to cover his nasty surgical scars. His hobbies include cutting out children’s tongues and driving chopsticks into drug addicts’ ears.
The Bond Girl, Scarlett Papava, is a fairly stock ally. A brunette trying to rescue her twin sister Poppy from Gorner’s drug lab in the Middle-East, Scarlett has more to her than meets the eye. I should’ve seen the twist involving her character earlier on. But she wasn’t interesting enough for me to really care. I partly blame Bond for not picking up on it either.
Gorner’s plot for destroying the West, flooding the market with drugs, is uncharacteristically abandonded at the midpoint for something more cinematic. His designs for making London the target of a nuclear attack by the Russians are somewhat plausible, but his original drug plot — what draws Bond into his web to begin with — is classic Fleming. The idea of a Bond villain tossing off his initial scheme and trading up for something bigger and badder is sort of clever. However, I think Faulks just didn’t believe today’s readers would be satisfied with Bond doing anything short of preventing WWIII…again.
The book still manages to entertain despite its flaws. Faulks adopts Fleming’s lovingly detailed descriptions of fine food, fine wine and fine women. He brings back the vulnerable Bond, the self-doubting and wounded Bond. Bond isn’t invincible like he is in many of the films and equipped with an arsenal of pocket-sized deus ex machinas to effect his escape from any given deathtrap. Bond’s only gadget in the book is a shard of glass he pulls from his cheek after he wrecks a truck.
I’d like to see Faulks write more Bond entires. It took Fleming a couple of books to find his style, and it wasn’t until “Dr. No,” the sixth book in the series, that he wrote what I consider to be the best of them all. Nobody does it better than Fleming. But that doesn’t mean I’d like to see someone else come close.
-Brad Lohan (as Ian Fleming)
Apr
13
I was late to the party for “V.” It was only last year that I watched Kenneth Johnson’s original 2-part mini-series and loved every Marc Singer-filled minute of it. The concept of fascist lizard people taking over Earth by winning hearts and minds rather than blowing up famous buildings is a clever approach to the sci-fi genre. However, due to “creative differences” (i.e. the network wanted things done on the cheap), Johnson wasn’t involved with the misnomered 3-part sequel, “V: The Final Battle,” nor “V: The Series” that lasted only a single, merciful season.
It seemed serendipitous that “V: The Second Generation” hit bookstores only months after I’d become a creepily obsessed fan. Along with all the incarnations of the TV show on DVD, I also proudly own a Visitor doll as well as the 17-part DC Comics series. I even picked up my copy of the novel at a book signing Kenneth Johnson attended; he misspelled my name when he made his autograph out to me, but whatever.
“V: The Second Generation” jettisons (or “retcons,” if you will) the events of “The Final Battle” and “The Series” and picks up some twenty years after the original two-part epic. The Human Resistance have failed to prevent the Visitors from nearly draining our oceans. Scientists — the community whom the Visitors feel are the greatest threat to their occupation — are force to live in ghettos. Young people are encouraged to become Teammates, a sort of Visitor version of the Hitler Youth Movement. And half-breeds (or “dregs”), offspring of humans and Visitors, make up a sort of permanent underclass; Johnson thankfully discards the whole “Star Child” nonsense that was introduced after his departure from the series.
A plot thread that was discarded from the television series after Johnson’s departure — the distress call the Resistance sent to an alien race that’s also at war with the Visitors — is finally paid off in the novel with the introduction of the Zedti. Three of their kind, each having evolved from a different insect species, make contact with the Resistance and join their cause. But soon there’s a lurking fear that the Zedti may not have the best interests of the human race at heart.
Unlike the mini-series, the book doesn’t have to contend with Broadcast Standards & Practices, so there’s plenty of graphic violence, adult language and human-on-lizard sex. It’s war, after all. War isn’t TV-PG.
“V: The Second Generation” is a solid follow-up to Johnson’s original vision. It’s a shame that many fans of “V” have had to wait 20 years to see it. Incidentally, I only had to wait a few short months. Maybe it’s best to be late for the party.
-Brad Lohan